US cuts off aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala

Honduran migrants heading to the United States walk after breaking through a police cordon on the Honduras-Guatemala border. Pics/AFP

Washington: The US is cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the State Department told CNN, a day after President Donald Trump said the three Central American countries had "set up" migrant caravans for entry into America.

"At the Secretary's instruction, we are carrying out the President's direction and ending FY 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle," a State Department spokesperson said on Saturday. The Northern Triangle of Central America refers to the three countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, especially in regard to their economic integration.

"We will be engaging Congress as part of this process," the spokesperson added. The government of Honduras responded to announcement on Saturday night, blaming "contradictory policies" by US agencies for the move. Officials in Tegucigalpa said they would continue working with El Salvador and Guatemala on the Northern Triangle initiatives while "internal discrepancies over regional cooperation are resolved."

Saturday's development comes after Trump said on Friday: "We were paying them tremendous amounts of money. And we're not paying them anymore. Because they haven't done a thing for us. They set up these caravans." Officials would not say exactly how much money would be affected by the directive with some of it likely already spent. Between last year and this year, about $1.3 billion was allocated to the region, with the vast majority of it going to those three countries, according to a study from the Congressional Research Service.

US struggling with rising asylum seekers

Border officials are aiming to more than quadruple the number of asylum seekers sent back over the southern border each day, a major expansion of a top government effort to address the swelling number of Central Americans arriving in the country, a Trump administration official said on Saturday. It was the latest attempt to ease a straining immigration system that officials say is at the breaking point.

$1.3bn
Amount allocated to the region

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